Sketch of the Civil Engineering of North America: Comprising Remarks on the Harbours, River and Lake Navigation, Lighthouses, Steam-Navigation, Water-Works, Canals, Roads, Railways, Bridges, and Other Works in that Country

A distinguished civil engineer, David Stevenson (1815-86) continued his father’s work of designing and building lighthouses around the coast of his native Scotland. His three-month tour of the United States and Canada in 1837 resulted in this highly detailed and unprecedented survey, first published in 1838. Stevenson covers a large number of engineering works, ranging from lighthouses and canals through to roads, bridges and railways. Notably, Stevenson’s praise for North America’s faster and sleeker steam vessels led British shipbuilders to emulate the models he describes and illustrates in this text. The work remains a historically valuable assessment of the continent’s infrastructure at a time of great industrial expansion. Stevenson’s The Principles and Practice of Canal and River Engineering, 2nd edition (1872) and his Life of Robert Stevenson (1878), a biography of his father, are also reissued in this series.